More than 90% of Australians search online using Google, racking up an impressive 250,000-300,000 searches every single day.
With Google Ads, businesses can capture that market, ensuring their brand name gets seen by the right audience in the right places.
It’s a powerful tool and one that small businesses can leverage to help their growth. Here’s a little more about what Google Ads really are, and what you can do as an SMB to make them work for you.
What are Google Ads?
Google Ads are a variety of advertising options that Google has created on its own platforms.
The primary service is Google AdWords, which allows businesses to ‘bid on’ certain keywords, so that when customers search for those keywords, those businesses get to appear in the paid area of the search results. If customers click on those ads, the business pays Google per click, which is why it is known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Similarly, businesses can use Google Ads to create advertisements that show up on other websites as well. This includes YouTube (Google owns YouTube), Blogger, and the millions of websites in the Google Display Network. In this case, ads can appear as banners or tiles on these websites, and again, businesses only pay Google if a customer actually clicks on the ad.
As a result, Google Ads can help small businesses to get more website traffic, improve brand awareness and drive conversions by putting your ads in front of the countless potential customers browsing the web every day.
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How to make Google Ads work for you.
You don’t have to become a Google Ads specialist to make this tool work for you. Here are a few simple tips that you can implement.
Define your goals.
Before getting started, figure out what you’re trying to achieve from your ads and what you’d like people to do once they click through to your site. From there, you can decide on how you’ll measure success.
For example, if you want to build brand awareness, you might simply track the number of clicks through to your site. On the other hand, if you want people to take a specific action such as make a purchase, you can choose to keep track of customer enquiries or sales.
Setting your goals upfront is crucial as they will guide the purpose of your ads, where they lead to on your website and your calls to action (for example, ‘Learn more’ versus ‘Contact us now’).
Set a monthly budget cap.
Google Ads allows you to set a budget cap each month, so that you pay for clicks up until you reach that cap, then Google stops displaying your ads in the results.
You can also pause or adjust your spend at any time, giving you greater control over where your money is going.
Choose relevant, specific keywords.
When selecting which keywords to bid on, make sure they’re relevant to your products or services and avoid broad phrases that could apply to many businesses.
For example, if you’re a window cleaner based in Parramatta, you might bid on ‘window cleaning Paramatta’ or ‘window cleaning Western Sydney’ rather than ‘window cleaning NSW’ or ‘window cleaning Sydney’.
The aim is to choose keywords that are specific to your business while also being searched for enough to reach a sizeable number of people.
To get started choosing keywords, create a list of the terms directly related to your business and your products or services. From there, you can use free keyword research tools such as Ubersuggest or WordStream Keywords to grow your list of keywords.
Use Ad Extensions.
Google Ad Extensions is a feature that expands your ads to give searchers more information about your business. This can include a phone number, address, review rating and links to other pages on your website.
According to Google, ad extensions can improve an ad’s click-through-rate (the percentage of people who view the ad and then click on it) by 10-15%. What’s more, they don’t cost anything extra on top of your initial bid, so it’s worthwhile including extensions to see if they boost the performance of your ads.
Considering advertising on Google but not sure where to start? Yellow Pages’ team of experts has the in-depth expertise to help drive more leads to your business.
